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By pressing ahead with the takeover of five public schools by a for-profit company, chancellor Harold Levy may be satisfying the Mayor, but he is abdicating his responsibility for running the schools at a time when the system is in crisis.
The chancellor has gone so far as to offer to finance the company’s public relations campaign to sell the idea to parents. The $500,000 offer was too unseemly for even Edison Schools to accept, but under the takeover plan, the taxpayers would still pay the company $250 million to run the five targeted schools for five years.
To most people in my community, where one of the schools is located, the money would be better spent for books, computers and supplies. That is why I said at a press conference last week that if privatization was the Chancellor’s only remedy to improve our schools, then he should quit.
In all of the debate, no one has explained why privatizing Harlem’s P.S. 161 and the other schools would be better for our children. Edison’s program is no different from what can, and should, be done now. There are already signs of improvement at P.S. 161, due to aggressive hiring of certified teachers and longer school days. But the chancellor is giving up before the blessings come, and without spelling out a comprehensive improvement plan for all the schools in the area.
Edison schools, which exists solely to make money, so far has done nothing to inspire confidence among our parents or the company’s investors. In five years, the company which has more than 100 schools in 45 cities under management, has lost more than $150 million, according to one report. The city of San Francisco is moving to end its contract, following accusations by board members of the company’s failure to improve student performance, say reports in the press. As a sweetener in New York, the company has offered to give each parent a computer. When the bottom line finally dictates cutbacks, will the cuts be made in the classroom?
I know that Chancellor Harold Levy is under tremendous pressure from a Mayor who is ideologically fixated on public school privatization. Our children should not be used as guinea pigs in a high stakes political experiment. Forcing Edison Schools down the throats of parents of Harlem, Flatbush and the other minority communities probably seemed like an easy way to get a foot in the door. But no one should be fooled into believing that residents of these communities don’t know what’s good for their children. Nor should they believe that we are powerless.
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